Unification Minister Yu Woo-ik urged North Korea to break a “vicious cycle of sanctions and isolation” by changing course and engaging in dialogue with the South.

With leadership shifts taking place across the region, neighbors will have a chance to “break with their passive concept of maintaining the status quo” and reassess their policy so as to help resolve the standoff with the nuclear-armed state and realize the peninsula’s unification, he said in a forum Tuesday.

“North Korea must no longer hesitate and embark on change. It should not resist the world’s historical drift calling for change. It should no longer put off denuclearization and rehabilitation of the people’s livelihoods,” he said in his welcoming remarks at the three-day Korea Global Forum in Seoul. 

“A new order should build upon sincere dialogue between stakeholders and solid common interests. We should open ourselves up and discuss each other’s thoughts based on trust.”

The annual forum is chaired by former Foreign Minister Han Seung-joo, hosted by the Unification Ministry in charge of inter-Korean affairs and organized by the Ilmin International Relations Institute.

Participants include James Steinberg, a former U.S. deputy secretary of state and now dean of Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs; Scott Snyder, a senior fellow for Korea studies and director of the U.S.-Korea policy program at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C.; and Yoo Ho-yeol, a North Korea studies professor at Korea University in Seoul.

Signs of change have been seeping out of the communist country since Kim Jong-un took power in December. The 20-odd, Swiss-educated leader has been confronting the military’s iron grip, exposing the reclusive family to the public and overhauling the poverty-stricken economy.

Cross-border relations, however, remain on ice on the back of the nuclear-armed regime’s relentless provocations including an April rocket liftoff.

“The political transition that has taken place in the North has not served to dispel these concerns,” Steinberg said in his keynote speech, citing its ongoing nuclear weapons projects and military and verbal threats against Seoul.

Despite political uncertainties and challenges surrounding the region, partners should join forces to bring about a “peaceful, unified and non-nuclear Korea,” he added.

“What is clear is that in the long run, only the peaceful unification of the Korean peninsula ― accompanied by the true economic reform and political opening in the North ― can provide a lasting basis for peace and stability on the peninsula and beyond,” Steinberg said.

“Though I am no longer part of the administration, I am confident that President Obama stands ready to work with whomever you elect to lead South Korea to achieve that goal.”

By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)